Mayfield High School hosted another military fair on April 17 outside of the cafeteria.

Pamela Bobinski, a guidance counselor at Mayfield, organizes the event each time. She said of the fair, “[It’s] an opportunity for military recruiters to come to MHS to visit with students interested in the military.”

The fair is for students interested in going into any branch of the military. Bobinski said, “Students will have the chance to learn and ask questions about why the military would be a great option for post-high school future planning.”

Junior Clay Cunningham has gone to the military fair in years past and said it’s nice to learn about it first-hand from recruiters. He said, “They basically just talk about why going into the military was a good fit for them and how it could potentially be a great fit for [high school students] too. It also helps because if you’re kind of interested in the military but you don’t exactly know what to do [because] they can aid you on it.”

Along with Cunningham, Ashley Hughes is another junior who attended the fair. She said, “To be honest I don’t know if I want to go into the military but I just kind of wanted to see what it was like and I wanted to hear the stories of the military men who came.”

Bobinski has to come in contact with these men in order for them to come to our school. She said, “Students can contact the local branch offices directly. Each branch has a designated recruiter assigned to Mayfield specifically, just like college admissions representatives. They reach out to me to organize and communicate their recruiting needs.”

Cunningham wasn’t surprised by how the fair was set up, due to seeing it in the past. He said, “The fair was pretty much set up the same as the previous year I had gone; they had tables out by the cafeteria with different branches and you could basically just walk up to them and talk and ask questions if you had any.”

Hughes had never been to the military fair and mentioned that she hadn’t even paid much attention to how it was set up in the past. She said, “I didn’t really have any expectations because I genuinely didn’t know what [the fair] was going to be like or how to even go about it. However, if I decide to participate again next year, my expectations will be pretty high because it was very informational.”

While Bobinski doesn’t really collect the stats on how many students, on average, attend the fair, she gets a feel for which students to contact towards the end of their high school career. Bobinski said, “[The recruiters] let us know which students need assistance their senior year. There are many students grades 9 – 12 here at MHS that are interested in the military for after high school.”

Cunningham was pretty content with the knowledge that he had absorbed from the fair. He said, “I think I did [gain good information] because I didn’t go in looking for anything specific, it was kind of just to get a general idea of the swing of things, and again to see if anything that they said really caught my interest.”

While the fair is a great way to start a spark for the students interested in the military, they can further their interest more by contacting a few people. Bobinski said, “Students are welcome to seek additional information from their counselors. Usually, students with their counselors early on to express their interest in the military. The communication with their counselors helps with learning the process and completing the steps necessary before graduation.”